Deviates

Coming together during their formative years, the Deviates' Brian (vocals), Charley (guitar), Donnie (drums), and Damien (bass) scowl at mainstream pop for their own brandish of punk rock. They started crashing guitars and pogoing around their garages in 1994 and spent the next two years honing their own rollicking punk style. A homemade demo tape was recorded and passed around South Bay-area gigs. Luckily,  guitarist Fletcher Dragge scored a copy. He liked what he heard, for he ended up producing the Deviates' debut My Life. Thrilled and grateful for Dragge's guidance, a more mature Deviates recorded a sophomore effort shortly after the dawning of the new millennium. Time Is the Distance marked the band's proper debut on Brett Gurewitz's Epitaph label in summer 2001.

South bay punks Deviates have announced plans to release Holding Out, their first new batch of songs in 20 years, on September 17th. The release of the Cameron Webb produced, 7-song album coincides with a run of west coast shows with Pennywise Oct. 7-9 and Nov. 5th.

Twenty years ago, Deviates were considered “the future of punk rock.” The South Bay band encapsulated everything that was right about Southern California’s late ’90s/early 2000s punk scene, and they seemed poised to explode after consecutive summers on the Warped Tour and the success of Time is the Distance, their sophomore effort.

A year later, they weren’t even a band anymore.

“At the time, it seemed like being a part of the future of punk rock required devotion to being in a touring band for life, which wasn't really what I think we had intended or what we thought it was gonna be,” says lead singer Brian Barbara. “When we started the band in 1994, we didn’t think that it would be anything. We were just kids playing the music we listened to, and punk rock was the soundtrack to our lives. By the time it evolved and grew to where we were putting out records, life had changed and we were ready to lay it down, and we didn’t know if that would be forever or when we’d pick it back up again.” As it turns out, 2021 would be the year Deviates picked up their instruments again — and now they’re back with a renewed fire inside of them.

The band’s third album, Holding Out, is a seven-song blast of SoCal punk rock new and old. A combination of recently written tunes alongside tracks created in the early 2000s for Deviates’ ill-fated original attempt at a third album, the South Bay punks’ latest work fuses every bit of melodic aggression that put the band on the cusp of stardom their first go-around with the more intelligent and mature approach that only decades of life experience can provide.

But while Barbara and the band may look and sound a little different now than they did in their early 20s, they’re still fueled by the same rage that fired them up before their 2002 breakup. They’re jumping right back into the spotlight this fall with shows featuring the likes of Pennywise and Dead Kennedys, and they’re more appreciative than ever of the friends, fans, and overall scene that continued to support them through their multi-decade hiatus.

This time around, they’ve got the added blessings of no longer being dumb kids and not having stratospheric expectations or external pressures on the band. As full-grown adults with other careers and families, Deviates is only reuniting because they want to — both for themselves and for everyone who’s been waiting for this moment. It’s a level of freedom the band never knew in their first run, and it has them more excited to perform and create than ever before. Much like how punk rock has continued to persist and reach generation after generation of disgruntled youths regardless of what’s popular on the radio, the group carries a renewed passion for both the music and the people around them — regardless of if they’re old fans or ones that discovered them in the interim.

“Twenty years later, you think you’ll never do it again, but I honestly never stopped writing and never stopped documenting music — and it always ended up going back to punk rock,” Barbara says. “I was 16 when we started this and I'm 42 now, but there’s always been this common thread for Deviates, which is that we’ve always been representative of the crowd that we play in front of. Twenty years later the heart behind this hasn’t changed.”

 

My Life (1996)

01 - My Life

02 - One Day

03 - Should...

04 - This Town

05 - Classes

06 - Midline

07 - I Remember

08 - Land Of Opportunities

09 - Who's Johnny?

10 - Playing To Lose

11 - We Grew Up

12 - Bad Seed

13 - Maybe Tomorrow

14 - What I've Heard

15 - There For Me

16 - I Hate (Teen Angst)

Time Is The Distance (2001)

01 - Come With Me

02 - Turn It Down

03 - Right Back To You

04 - Twice As Nice

05 - One In Ten

06 - So I Become

07 - Time Is The Distance

08 - The End

09 - No Mistake

10 - Disclaimer

11 - Grounded

12 - Start Again

13 - Profile

14 - My Crime

Holding Out EP (2021)

01 - 40 Days And 40 Nights

02 - Nothing To Offer

03 - Holding Out

04 - The Liar

05 - From The Crowd

06 - Wasted

07 - On My Own

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